More new books

2 December 2008 · Comments 

If you read this blog with any frequency (doubtful) you might have noticed that I haven’t posted much in the past few months. There are a variety of reasons for this which I won’t go into here, but I have still been partaking of one of my primary passions (or vices, perhaps): reading honest-to-goodness dead-tree books. Six of the titles below have arrived (very quickly, I might add) from Amazon in the past two days, the rest I’ve bought in good old bricks-and-mortar bookshops (as well as a bunch of other titles I’ve excluded here) from either Waterstones (I have a staff discount) or my favourite second-hand bookshop Elvis Shakespeare.

This is a selection (at least as far as this blog’s focus is concerned) of some of the books that I’ve bought and/or read in recent months.

Currently reading

Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes by Daniel Everett

I read about this in The Independent and The Guardian. I have a keen interest in languages and when this has a religious angle (Everett went to the Amazon as a christian missionary to try to convert the Pirahãs) it really piqued my curiosity. Well written with plenty of humour. If you have an interest in languages, I can recommend it.

Conversations On Consciousness by Susan Blackmore

A collection of conversations that Susan Blackmore has had with a variety of philosophers and scientists about consciousness presented in a question/answer format. Quite heavy going, but interesting nevertheless.

50 Philosophy Ideas You Really Need To Know by Ben Dupré

This presents some of key philosophical questions in a very readable form, without too much jargon (but explaining it where it’s used). The book presents the history of related ideas on a time-line. Very readable, although the pullouts are occasionally a little distracting.

100 Essential Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know by John D Barrow

I’m quite confused by this book. It seems to be primarily a mathematical primer for aspects of the everyday world around that, I suppose, most people either aren’t aware of or ignore (or don’t care about) but it reads like it’s trying to tell you something earth-shattering and, just as the explanation comes to a climax, it ends. Frankly, the writing feels rushed and incomplete, and I’m feeling quite unsatisfied by it. I’ll carry on with it though.

Read

Bad Science by Ben Goldacre

Ben Goldacre, the guy behind the Bad Science blog, evidence based medicine advocate and nemesis of woo in the UK, has written Bad Science to show how the media and purveyors of snake oil get their claws into the UK health market. He pulls no punches, and sprinkles his writing with an abundance of humour.

Highly recommended, if just for the chapter on that awful poo lady (don’t you just love Google bombs?).

What is Your Dangerous Idea? edited by John Brockman

A collection of short (some are really short) essays about what a variety of thinkers consider as “dangerous ideas”. What is Your Dangerous Idea? was the question posed by Edge in 2006 as suggested by Steven Pinker.

Elephants On Acid and Other Bizarre Experiments by Alex Boese

Another well written popular science title that demonstrates, if nothing else, that scientists are weirdos. ;-)

Yet to read

The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the nonbeliever selected by Christopher Hitchens

I bought this thinking that it would be a collection of quotes or short essays, but this tome seems to be anything but portable. Still, it looks interesting.

A Rulebook for Arguments by Anthony Weston

I’ve an interest in how good arguments are constructed, and this looks like a good companion volume to How to Win Every Argument. Purchased on a whim, but it had good Amazon reviews.

50 reasons people give for believing in a god by Guy P Harrison

One of the reasons that I think about religion (apart from a very strong anti-theocratic bent) is that, though never having had any kind of religious upbringing, I’m fascinated by the things people believe. I really have no idea why this is. After hearing a couple of interviews with the author, I thought that this would at least give me a little more insight into why people believe in gods.

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

I enjoyed Blink and The Tipping Point and this is Gladwell’s newest book. I think I’m expecting something akin to The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, but a reading will tell.

God: The Failed Hypothesis by Victor J Stenger

I heard about this from The Atheist Experience podcast and Stenger seemed to have some interesting ideas. I’ve not really heard too much else about it though.

I don’t think I’m going to be short of things to read over the holiday season…

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Coverage of religions in The Independent

13 June 2008 · Comments 

The Independent is, for the next eight days commencing on Saturday 14th June, covering six of the major religions in a two-part ‘encyclopædia’ and a series of mini-booklets.

Saturday 14 June : ‘The Encyclopedia of World Religions’ Part 1
Sunday 15 June: ‘The Encyclopedia of World Religions’ Part 2
Monday 16 June: Christianity
Tuesday 17 June: Islam
Wednesday 18 June: Judaism
Thursday 19 June: Hinduism
Friday 20 June: Buddhism
Saturday 21 June: Sikhism

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‘Dangerous Ideas’ banned in China

11 June 2008 · Comments 

The book What Is Your Dangerous Idea?: Today’s Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable has been blocked from being published in China. The Chinese authorities give the following reasoning excuse:

[it] can’t be published in China because some content is not accordant to Chinese regulations, for example, some content about religious, soul. [sic]

Whatever one might accuse the Chinese government of, freethinking obviously isn’t part of the problem.

Note to self: you still haven’t got around to buying this one yet, have you?

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Books and updating

5 June 2008 · Comments 

This is a two-in-one post concerning recent book purchases and the time I have to update this blog, so feel free to skip the bit you’re not interested in.

Read more

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Arthur C Clarke (1917-2008)

18 March 2008 · Comments 

I’ve just heard on the news that sci-fi author and inventor Arthur C Clarke has died at the grand old age of 90 in Sri Lanka.

While I’ve not read much of his more recent output, his earlier works will stay with me and I am ever grateful for their influence in my childhood.

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WorldNutDaily hack takes Hitchens’ challenge

1 December 2007 · Comments 

Do you remember the challenge that Christopher Hitchens apparently mentions in his new book Portable Atheist (which I haven’t yet read) and put to theists everywhere while touring with God Is Not Great? I’ll remind you:

Name me an ethical statement made or an action performed by a believer that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer.

It turns out that someone called Tom Flannery of that inimitable organ, WorldNetDaily, has taken it upon himself to take up the gauntlet and try to answer it.

And Flannery’s answer is (drumroll, please)…

In the case of Christianity, if its claims are true, then the greatest moral law of all is to love the Lord God with all of one’s heart, mind and strength. That’s something an unbeliever, by self-definition, could never do.

Emphasis as original, for whatever that’s worth, although it seems to me, from the general tone of the whole piece, that this emphasis has a pronounced sneering tone.

With mind-bending sophistry, Flannery argues that Hitchens, to then refute this answer, has to prove that christianity is not true. If he doesn’t, then he’s not engaging in the proper rules of philosophical debate and, I expect by default, must have failed to refute it.

He knows that in a philosophical debate of any kind, the skeptic (in this case Hitchens) must give the presumption of truth to his adversary. He must presume that the philosophy or worldview he is opposing (in this case the Christian faith) is in fact true, and then debunk it on that basis (on the basis of its own claims) if he is to cast any doubts upon its veracity.

…

The Bible tells us that it is impossible for a person to even say “Jesus is Lord” in spirit and in truth unless the Holy Spirit is the motivating force behind it, in which case the person has already accepted God and received the Spirit.

In arguing this, he makes note of The War Against Terror (TWAT™) and then claims that islam is not a true religion, and therefore doesn’t count.

Hitchens would point to the homicidal use of those hijacked airliners and say: “That’s religion for you.” To which true believers like myself would respond: “No, Christopher, that’s false religion for you.” He doesn’t seem to understand there’s a difference

Somehow I doubt that Flannery has subjected himself to the same standard that he puts on Hitchens: to prove that islam is wrong before dismissing it. Of course, with the theist logic at work, an assumption on his part that his belief is true automagically makes every other religious belief necessarily false. But to do this, he would have to prove christianity true which, of course, he doesn’t.

And, there’s the obligatory dig at his (obviously idiotic) idea of evolution, or — as the fundies like to call it — “Darwinism”:

Everything from child rape to murder to genocide would be justifiable as “survival of the fittest” or a modified version of it (say, “desire of the strongest”).

I’m sure I don’t need to point out the multiple levels of stupid in this single statement.

The funniest (and I use the term ironically) thing about this piece of “journalism”, though, is the anecdote at the end of the piece:

Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias tells of a time he spoke at a university in defense of truth and was accosted afterward by a group of angry students who insisted there is no such thing as absolute truth. Zacharias challenged the leader of the group by asking him, “If instead of giving a speech today, I came out and cut a newborn baby into pieces on the stage, would that have been wrong for me to do?”

The young man thought for a moment, realizing that if he said it was wrong he would be acknowledging the existence of truth. Then he tellingly replied: “I may not have liked watching you do it, but at the same time I can’t say that it would have been wrong.”

I’ll answer that: yes, it would have been wrong. At the same time, it should be noted that his bible shows his god happily duplicating this scenario on a scale that can only boggle the mind (Exodus 12:29-30, Psalms 137:9) and therefore, by Flannery’s own argument (God by nature … is perfectly holy and therefore perfectly just.) it’s not wrong, is it?

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